College Student Gets $24,000 in Bitcoins By Asking—–On National TV

Danny Gallagher

An unidentified college student made up a sign for his college’s game day crowd with a QR code on it asking his mom to send him some money. Then he displayed it in a crowd shot of last Saturday’s ESPN Gameday broadcast where anyone who saw it could scan it and send him a donation through Bitcoin. We understand that kind of desperation. Anyone who ever went to college had to face a time or two when endless nights of drunkenly buying rounds and Super-sizing breakfast, lunch, dinner and the occasional snack would catch up to them.

We wish we’d been desperate and smart, though. Apparently, a lot of other people besides that student’s mom saw the sign. Helpful people, too, because–according to a scan of the Bitcoin QR code–the guy has made around $24,000. The money hasn’t stop flowing in since the story went viral and more news outlets and websites such as Reddit have starting posting links to the account.

So basically, he’s found a genius way of becoming the world’s most technologically savvy street bum by creating a begging cup that he can shove in front of the whole world’s face and ask for change. We’d probably be a little more understanding of the kid’s situation and scheme if we didn’t have to spend the majority of our college days trying to survive on endless cups of Ramen noodles and using our gas cards to buy groceries at the Texaco convenience store and that’s after asking our folks for an extra buck or two.